This trend has always been wild to me. The USA feels like a solid home of automaking since the inception of the ICE. They don't necessarily make the best cars but they have the infrastructure, knowledge & experience, and culture to innovate and drive the industry forward.
The next big generational change in car design matures to commercial viability - the electric motor for cars - and the USA turns it into a bogeyman? Why? This is the next big economic win to take advantage of and the US has the factory and industrial workforce and infrastructure to nail it. Companies vying to be the Ford of the electric era. Instead it gets warped into some political litmus test for communities and people start 'rolling coal' to prove a point.
Does it feel good for impoverished industrial communities in the States to see China and BYD leading the way on something they could be doing?
There's still time to get back on track but it's running out. China will be pushing viable affordable models in the next few years for first time buyers, the secondhand market is maturing, lease electric cars are competitive in Europe, charge points are not hard to find, gas is only getting more expensive, and most governments have ICE phase out deadlines in place.
There’s no profit in converting to electric vehicles: a trillion dollars of electrical infrastructure upgrade costs would come due from corporate apartment holding companies, small-scale landlords, and parking garage owners having to deploy electric outlets of any wattage to every parking spot currently offered to renters (the majority of car owners) today. Just as with COVID and HVAC air exchange rates, the benefits of doing the work are outweighed by the inability to generate recurring corporate revenue from it. Rivian and Tesla have likely reached saturation with the wealthy homeowner market and none of their profits are being forcibly redirected to the unpaid infrastructure costs, so of course the U.S. is stalled on EVs: the U.S. is stalled on at-home EV charging.
You say “there’s no profit” and then describe the most tremendous business opportunity in a hundred years.
There’s no profit for the current oligarchy; but to say there is no profit to be made from electrifying a billion plus parking spots; to install and manage infrastructure for millions of small business partners, to build new power plants with ever increasing demand — it sounds like a free markets entrepreneurs wet dream.
Of course to admit such would be to admit we are in a oligarchic structure that is antithetical to a supposed “free market” and so the capitalists must conjure stories about how electricity just is impossible to produce and electrical lines literally cannot be added to the American infrastructure or it will all suddenly topple over.
Differentiating this narrative from the expansion of high speed internet is difficult. Woe is me the oligarchic natural monopoly subsidized or wholly compensated by the taxpayer but unable to advance at all; change is impossible.
> it sounds like a free markets entrepreneurs wet dream
Landlords would either have to give up profit to pay for these installations, and/or raise rent on their tenants to afford them.
Many tenants can neither inflation increases in rent, nor increases covering the capital expenditure of electrical outlets in rental parking spots. This share of tenants grows each year that inflation outpaces wages, independent of whether landlords bother with that capital expenditure (which, to date, they largely do not).
As this business opportunity is associated primarily with the worker class rather than any wealthy class, the opportunity only becomes profitable when those businesses that employ 'worker class' personnel — think Starbucks barista rather than SFBay A.I. engineer — are distributing profits to those personnel in the form of wage increases to a sufficient degree that the household's renting power is not decreasing. Any wage gap chart will show that, since the 1980s, non-wealthy households — including the former 'middle' class — have experienced a continuous reduction in purchasing power for several decades. One can reasonable assume this will continue barring non-free interventions in the market.
Given that any reasonable business would never voluntarily give up profits as wages unless compelled, we can assume that those footing the bill for the 'entrepreneur's wet dream' you describe would be landlords — there is, quite literally, no one else left to pay that bill. The state can't impose regulations requiring such upgrades and let the free market work it out because landlords will simply dump that cost into rent, sharply worsening the nationwide poverty and housing epidemic, which would reduce the total amount of revenue available from the rental market. Neither the state nor the landlords would benefit from that outcome.
If you have a different theory of free market that involves business voluntarily sharing revenue with workers without raising price, or landlords investing revenue in enhancements without raising rental costs — and especially without imposing 'non-free' regulatory or union pressures — then I'd love to hear more about that.
Landlords increasing rent totally sounds like part of a free market entrepreneurs wet dream to me! If I’m a free market entrepreneur the last thing I want is pesky rent controls limiting my ability to provide supply! Have you ever rented? Did they ever decrease your rent when the economy was looking down or do you acknowledge that they don’t actually care about the income of their tenants insofar as they can extract revenue from someone?
You must feel that a free market cares that some people will no longer be able to afford rent; I don’t believe the economic definition of a free market includes such an idea; I think it’s very happy to displace people from their homes in order to shuffle in those who are willing to pay higher rents; see also: gentrification
Your point hinges on the idea that rent for people making wages below “SFBay A.I. engineer” is not increasing or would not increase because of the inelasticity of these consumers to price increases; can you substantiate this claim in any way?
It’s also worth noting that there are lots of government grants going towards electrification of vehicles including installation of EV chargers, so even removing your idea about landlords refusing to raise rents because they are worried about their tenants (lol) there is still easy room for landlords to get grants to pay for the installation/maintenance of these chargers anyways.
This repeated and explicitly-sexual metaphor in a non-sexual context is rather wearisome.
> You must feel that a free market cares
A free market does not qualify for use the property of 'caring'. Neither emotions nor intentions are a property of a 'market', free or otherwise, and I categorically reject all statements, inferences, and/or implications to the contrary (such as "that a free market cares").
> can you substantiate this claim in any way?
I made a statement in public for all to hear, I am unable to defend the statements I make, and am simply unwilling to have a reasoned discussion. You have been unfailing polite, and I have been nothing but rude.
> This repeated and explicitly-sexual metaphor in a non-sexual context is rather wearisome.
Thanks for the English lit critique I guess but your opinion on various colloquialisms in the English language is not relevant to the conversation.
Your other points are similarly irrelevant to the convo, you use the idea of a market “caring” literally, claiming that of course a market doesn’t have emotions and can’t care which is plainly trying to deflect your suggestion that the market could never reach position x because it’s ultimately unprofitable for a landlord to engage in some behavior long term and you refused to materially respond to or acknowledge any of my points. Your post is abstracted from reality further than the idea that a market could “care” about something being taken literally. Obviously the market is not a human with wants, cares or needs.
> I made a statement in public for all to hear, I am unable to defend the statements I make
Well I’ve asked for you to defend them and this was your response so I assume you are being genuine instead of sarcastic here? Why respond at all I wonder.
If you can point to where I’m being impolite or offended you I’m happy to acknowledge this; I wasn’t planning to have a conversation with someone so sensitive that things like “I think your idea is bad” is a personal insult or impolite.
There’s too much regulation here to compete. Drones are all Chinese too because of all the FAA restrictions on the technology.
For EVs, there were the EV mandates, and there are several restrictions on mining the rare earth metals here like lithium and cobalt that China does not do.
Also, the US is physically very large and spread out, with more long distance driving, which plays more into an ice vehicle’s advantages. Sometimes even cheaper and definitely quicker than fast charging on a road trip.
Personally I think plug in hybrids could work better, especially EREVs. My concern is governments leaping to the conclusions that full EVs, mandate them, and in so doing lock out promising technologies from improving
The US is big - but these GM EVs under threat all had 200kWh+ batteries and 500mi ranges.
The reason why EVs suck in the US comes down to high electric prices, scarce charging points, and the level to which EVs tend to be locked down and unrepairable.
My guess is ICE cars sell more energy which is packaged as gas, which benefits certain industries. More control over price. Not as much control over electric with solar and other sources. I don't think it's much more than that, it just has a political package.
> Here's mine, Saudi Arabia is by far the largest exporter:
I think it's not unreasonable to think that "producer" means "producer", not "exporter". Wikipedia has a nominally matching article [0], which indeed lists the US as the largest producer of crude oil and lease condensate.
1 is not true, 2 maybe, but people haven’t bought EVs beyond the upper middle class segment too. 3 I don’t think it’s employees, but there’s definitely government involvement which has made innovation difficult.
Plus, there’s a question if pure EVs are the best, perhaps EREVs might be better.
Throw in: Unwilling or unable to build out the charger network. No power for EV’s as it’s going to crypto and ai. And to aluminum smelting. And to heating the northern states. And to cooling the southern ones. And losing the energy from wind, solar and geothermal. Maybe nuclear as I don’t know where the guy stands on that.
This is definitely what consumers think about when making a ourchasing decision. You can't go more than a couple of miles in a populated area without seeing a gas station. Charger stations on the other hand are few and far in between, and take much longer than a gas refill does.
Gas prices are also a major economic indicator in people's minds. They have an idea of what the per gallon cost "should" be, and how much it costs to fill up the tank. They have no such equivalent estimate for electric vehicles.
And also a simple fact, that current EVs are simply bad products from a UX perspective.
Getting a new car has felt like a step up in quality of life, but not so with EVs. You get an overall worse experience.
A part from already mentioned issues like, charging infrastructure, range and charge times there are everyday things of living with a car.
Removing stocks and buttons for essentials controls like drive select, turn signals, door locks and opening the glove box.
Inability to fix small issues like replacing a light bulb or fixing a lock. Aging software that becomes unsupported by manufacturer a few years in. But is much more essential to car operation, than before.
And low resale value that makes these very expensive to buy vehicles, essentially single use appliances with planned obsoletion embedded.
Living with EVs is tougher than ICE cars. And until that at least equalizes, what regular consumer would want that?
Looking at the CEO's source he is talking about the PR release from GM about adding capacity for straight up ICE vehicles. Why the hell aren't they investing in hybrids?
EVs are having their own little dotcom bust right now. You can't say the companies didn't try. Every automaker came out with a near identical EV that was too expensive. And some even made some pretty bold steps to stop ICE production on some models.
EVs are still inevitable in the not too distant future so long as batteries keep improving, but the jump is not going to happen overnight.
They need to have a true 500 mile range, even at low ambient temperatures. I live in MN; winters are fucking brutal on EVs and their already inflated estimated ranges.
Why? Gas cars get much worse mileage in low temperatures too. Not as bad as EVs, but it is substantial. Many gas cars don’t have 500mi of range, certainly not in dead cold conditions.
With the increase of density of fast charging infrastructure (which, is pretty much the only reason you need large ranges in EVs), you require less overall range between stops.
What’s needed is access to at home charging infrastructure so cars can be topped off daily.
No but what they do have is the ability to pull into literally any Andy Griffith backwater town gas station and be on their way in 5 minutes. That makes their range nearly unlimited.
This need is a bit overstated. Keep in mind that unlikes a gas car you can charge up your EV at home. How regularly does the median American actually drive 300+ miles in a single day?
The average American household has multiple cars - having at least one of them being a EV commuter appliance isn't that wild of an idea.
I work from home and honestly might use a tank of gas a month; I also only own one vehicle. However, I do have a vacation home where I drive to/from every week from June to September and it does not have currently have the level of electric service, nor availability of charging infrastructure nearby, to allow for me to charge an EV w/o driving 25+ miles each way.
So; to answer your question: how often do I drive 300+ miles in a day? 2x a week for 1/4 of the year.
Unless your vacation home is off grid, there is almost no way you would not be able to have enough electrical service to charge an EV. Maybe not enough to install a big chunky 50-60A 240V outlet, but a much smaller and reasonable 240V 20A outlet is more than sufficient for most cars. You won’t have a full charge overnight with a 3.8kW charger, but it’ll be plenty usable for putting around town.
Also, your anecdote is certainly not the plethora of people in America. The vast majority of folks take maybe one vacation a year, if that, and certainly don’t own a vacation home.
Not having to go to a gas station ever is a paradigm shift that I think a lot of ICE owners underestimate. You're never late to something because you need to make a pit stop to get gas. If you always have your car charged at home, time to get places is much more deterministic. You also don't need to worry about CC skimmers, which at least where I live have been a pretty common problem off and on for many years.
I live in MN and have a Lightning. The range does drop significantly in the winter compared to the summer, however no other vehicle I've ever owned has been able to pre-heat my cabin in my garage every morning before my commute to work, and I'm not driving 500 miles to work so it seems like a worthwhile trade off to me.
nah, stephen miran doesn't want us to default on US debt. Instead, the goal is to devalue the US dollar to reduce the cost of debt service (with the convenient side effect of reducing real incomes while maintaining the wealth of asset holders).
I like the idea of vehicles with an electric drivetrain, but I mostly drive a pickup truck and do truck things with it (tow things long distances).
Something like the "new" Ramcharger (2026?) is perfect for me. It is a plug-in hybrid with an electric drivetrain, with a V6 generator for adding range.
Build more vehicles like that please. Ideally something with Toyota's reliability.
Many communities in Florida love electric golf carts. If the right vehicles are available at the right price with the right capabilities people buy them.
Because chargers were enshitificated before they were widely deployed. I want to arrive on charger, connect the charging hose, wave a debit/credit card or my phone with NFC interface and start charging.
But noooo, you need to have an account with your debit card linked to it and use their half assed application or you won't be able to activate charger. And you should better pray that charger in your destination is actually operational and your car is compatible with the charger, which itself is fucking wild.
The whole EV industry essentially ignored lesson learnt for last 100 years using ICE cars - gas pumps, with somebody who can assist you if you don't know do exist for a reason!
Rivian CEO should go outside and try what is the average charging experience for an average customer.
In AU, they already have public charging networks (Evie, for example) that allow you to pre register your VIN and just roll up, plug in and it starts charging.
Actually I think this sort of feature could sell in regular cars as well. Embed a chip next to filler cap. Then at station just pull out nozzle place it in and in few second automatically start pumping. Then later the charge would go directly to credit card.
A cradle-to-grave analysis from the University of Michigan has shown that battery electric vehicles have lower lifetime greenhouse gas emissions than internal combustion engine vehicles, hybrids and plug-in hybrids in every county in the contiguous U.S.
People could see this coming a mile away. The automakers, whom currently produce the vast majority of vehicles, are tired of financing their competition (Tesla), who for years now has sucked all the air out of the room in the auto industry, despite accounting for a small fraction of vehicle sales overall. The carbon credits are solely responsible for creating Tesla. They created an unfair environment where we have an industry propping up a company that should have never been propped up to begin with. Had it not been for those credits, Tesla would never be able to compete on its own and would have gone bankrupt a long time ago.
Electric vehicles have a dubious environmental impact, require special and costly new infrastructure, are inferior economically and do not align with US policy goals around energy.
Look at every business who has tried to adopt Tesla vehicles and you will see only failure followed by trying to unload the vehicles for a huge loss. Tesla cannot or will not produce a decent work truck, and are grossly disconnected with the needs of the average American (self driving, robots and other such bric-a-brac need not apply).
For those that want to purchase these vehicles, they should remain an option, albeit a minor one. The technology (still quite inferior) needs to stand on its own, not be propped up by the public, the vast majority of us do not want an electric vehicle and will never want one.
>“ Electric vehicles have a dubious environmental impact, require special and costly new infrastructure, are inferior economically and do not align with US policy goals around energy.”
Citations needed.
Oil extraction is massively damaging, co2 is causing global weather turmoil, exhaust while better than the 70’s for passenger cars/trucks is still an air quality issue, noise pollution is worse for ice.
And electric cars are objectively more pleasant and nicer to ride unless one likes loud, slow to accelerate vehicles over smooth and quiet. I guess there will be some who prefer noise and lag for nostalgia.
ICE ludism doesn’t matter though, we’re at a tipping point, especially in the rest of the world. Ice cars are become horses and no amount of complaining will stop that.
> And electric cars are objectively more pleasant and nicer to ride unless one likes loud, slow to accelerate vehicles over smooth and quiet. I guess there will be some who prefer noise and lag for nostalgia.
"Objective" is reaching a bit. Loud? My last two ICE vehicles have sufficient cabin noise-dampening to the point that one of the manufacturers can actually pump engine noise into the cabin. Tire noise from EVs is more, typically as a factor of increased gross vehicle weight. Lag? Unless you are driving an ICE with a large turbo, what lag? And as the owner of an ICE that can accelerate 0-60 faster than consumer EVs with the exception of Tesla's Performance models (which it keeps pace with) and the Plaid, and who likes having a performant vehicle, I could count on one hand the number of times I've needed that level of acceleration. Regular Tesla Model 3 0-60 times of 5.6s is absolutely in the world of Audi (with multiple entry level models in the 5s range) and even Camry only half a second behind.
I like EVs, I've spent plenty of time in them and enjoy driving them.
But I think there's a certain irony that often those who squeal "ICE Luddite" seem to also hold views about ICE modernization that are more akin to a time capsule of "the last time I cared about ICE vehicles was 15 years ago, and I'm certain they haven't advanced an inch since then".
Okay so to recap your rebuttal is coming from the context of “my last two cars were high end luxury vehicles with plentiful sound dampening” and “one of my cars is an extremely fast sports car”. Okay… yes from the standpoint of the 1% in their audi R8’s, I suppose ICE and EVs are equally quiet and lagless. I personally can’t speak to that so I’ll take your word.
But Comparing more normal people cars though like various mid range post 2020 Subarus, fords, rav4s, and 2010s Volvos, among others, those compared to EVs and plug in hybrids in EV mode including lower end ones like the crosstrek plug in hybrid - the latter were all quieter and had immediate acceleration w less lag compared those ice.
(And I’m excluding the 2025 stop start Subaru forester from that assessment because it’s lag is a whole other level from stopped. Not sure if that’s normal for all stop start cars, but perhaps this is the type of modern ICE innovation from the past 15years that the ev people are unaware of?)
Equally, airplane travel is a totally different experience when one is on a private jet or in first class versus taking southwest.
> Loud? My last two ICE vehicles have sufficient cabin noise-dampening to the point that one of the manufacturers can actually pump engine noise into the cabin.
Most cars are not like this, because they don't spend as much money on sound dampening materials. The baseline 'good' for an EV is just much higher. Also, at idle, ICE cars are louder.
> Lag? Unless you are driving an ICE with a large turbo, what lag?
Pretty much every ICE car that is commanded to rapidly accelerate must drop down a gear (or 2). The mechanical time to shift gears and then also rev match just physically takes time. More expensive ICE cars are faster, sure, but compared to even the most anemic EV, the EV will win in response time. As soon as you hit the accelerator, you get torque. It's just not even close. Likewise with deceleration. You have a very non-linear deceleration curve with an ICE vehicle that is neither smooth nor even.
The ICE car industry has been externalizing its damage for a long time, and if anything should stop being "propped up" its them; if you don't want to actively hand money to Tesla, that's fine, but Tesla is still going to have a natural advantage in a world where we stop letting people who insist on driving ICE cars fuck the world up without paying for it.
This trend has always been wild to me. The USA feels like a solid home of automaking since the inception of the ICE. They don't necessarily make the best cars but they have the infrastructure, knowledge & experience, and culture to innovate and drive the industry forward.
The next big generational change in car design matures to commercial viability - the electric motor for cars - and the USA turns it into a bogeyman? Why? This is the next big economic win to take advantage of and the US has the factory and industrial workforce and infrastructure to nail it. Companies vying to be the Ford of the electric era. Instead it gets warped into some political litmus test for communities and people start 'rolling coal' to prove a point.
Does it feel good for impoverished industrial communities in the States to see China and BYD leading the way on something they could be doing?
There's still time to get back on track but it's running out. China will be pushing viable affordable models in the next few years for first time buyers, the secondhand market is maturing, lease electric cars are competitive in Europe, charge points are not hard to find, gas is only getting more expensive, and most governments have ICE phase out deadlines in place.
There’s no profit in converting to electric vehicles: a trillion dollars of electrical infrastructure upgrade costs would come due from corporate apartment holding companies, small-scale landlords, and parking garage owners having to deploy electric outlets of any wattage to every parking spot currently offered to renters (the majority of car owners) today. Just as with COVID and HVAC air exchange rates, the benefits of doing the work are outweighed by the inability to generate recurring corporate revenue from it. Rivian and Tesla have likely reached saturation with the wealthy homeowner market and none of their profits are being forcibly redirected to the unpaid infrastructure costs, so of course the U.S. is stalled on EVs: the U.S. is stalled on at-home EV charging.
You say “there’s no profit” and then describe the most tremendous business opportunity in a hundred years.
There’s no profit for the current oligarchy; but to say there is no profit to be made from electrifying a billion plus parking spots; to install and manage infrastructure for millions of small business partners, to build new power plants with ever increasing demand — it sounds like a free markets entrepreneurs wet dream.
Of course to admit such would be to admit we are in a oligarchic structure that is antithetical to a supposed “free market” and so the capitalists must conjure stories about how electricity just is impossible to produce and electrical lines literally cannot be added to the American infrastructure or it will all suddenly topple over.
Differentiating this narrative from the expansion of high speed internet is difficult. Woe is me the oligarchic natural monopoly subsidized or wholly compensated by the taxpayer but unable to advance at all; change is impossible.
> it sounds like a free markets entrepreneurs wet dream
Landlords would either have to give up profit to pay for these installations, and/or raise rent on their tenants to afford them.
Many tenants can neither inflation increases in rent, nor increases covering the capital expenditure of electrical outlets in rental parking spots. This share of tenants grows each year that inflation outpaces wages, independent of whether landlords bother with that capital expenditure (which, to date, they largely do not).
As this business opportunity is associated primarily with the worker class rather than any wealthy class, the opportunity only becomes profitable when those businesses that employ 'worker class' personnel — think Starbucks barista rather than SFBay A.I. engineer — are distributing profits to those personnel in the form of wage increases to a sufficient degree that the household's renting power is not decreasing. Any wage gap chart will show that, since the 1980s, non-wealthy households — including the former 'middle' class — have experienced a continuous reduction in purchasing power for several decades. One can reasonable assume this will continue barring non-free interventions in the market.
Given that any reasonable business would never voluntarily give up profits as wages unless compelled, we can assume that those footing the bill for the 'entrepreneur's wet dream' you describe would be landlords — there is, quite literally, no one else left to pay that bill. The state can't impose regulations requiring such upgrades and let the free market work it out because landlords will simply dump that cost into rent, sharply worsening the nationwide poverty and housing epidemic, which would reduce the total amount of revenue available from the rental market. Neither the state nor the landlords would benefit from that outcome.
If you have a different theory of free market that involves business voluntarily sharing revenue with workers without raising price, or landlords investing revenue in enhancements without raising rental costs — and especially without imposing 'non-free' regulatory or union pressures — then I'd love to hear more about that.
Landlords increasing rent totally sounds like part of a free market entrepreneurs wet dream to me! If I’m a free market entrepreneur the last thing I want is pesky rent controls limiting my ability to provide supply! Have you ever rented? Did they ever decrease your rent when the economy was looking down or do you acknowledge that they don’t actually care about the income of their tenants insofar as they can extract revenue from someone?
You must feel that a free market cares that some people will no longer be able to afford rent; I don’t believe the economic definition of a free market includes such an idea; I think it’s very happy to displace people from their homes in order to shuffle in those who are willing to pay higher rents; see also: gentrification
Your point hinges on the idea that rent for people making wages below “SFBay A.I. engineer” is not increasing or would not increase because of the inelasticity of these consumers to price increases; can you substantiate this claim in any way?
It’s also worth noting that there are lots of government grants going towards electrification of vehicles including installation of EV chargers, so even removing your idea about landlords refusing to raise rents because they are worried about their tenants (lol) there is still easy room for landlords to get grants to pay for the installation/maintenance of these chargers anyways.
> wet dream
This repeated and explicitly-sexual metaphor in a non-sexual context is rather wearisome.
> You must feel that a free market cares
A free market does not qualify for use the property of 'caring'. Neither emotions nor intentions are a property of a 'market', free or otherwise, and I categorically reject all statements, inferences, and/or implications to the contrary (such as "that a free market cares").
> can you substantiate this claim in any way?
I made a statement in public for all to hear, I am unable to defend the statements I make, and am simply unwilling to have a reasoned discussion. You have been unfailing polite, and I have been nothing but rude.
> This repeated and explicitly-sexual metaphor in a non-sexual context is rather wearisome.
Thanks for the English lit critique I guess but your opinion on various colloquialisms in the English language is not relevant to the conversation.
Your other points are similarly irrelevant to the convo, you use the idea of a market “caring” literally, claiming that of course a market doesn’t have emotions and can’t care which is plainly trying to deflect your suggestion that the market could never reach position x because it’s ultimately unprofitable for a landlord to engage in some behavior long term and you refused to materially respond to or acknowledge any of my points. Your post is abstracted from reality further than the idea that a market could “care” about something being taken literally. Obviously the market is not a human with wants, cares or needs.
> I made a statement in public for all to hear, I am unable to defend the statements I make
Well I’ve asked for you to defend them and this was your response so I assume you are being genuine instead of sarcastic here? Why respond at all I wonder.
If you can point to where I’m being impolite or offended you I’m happy to acknowledge this; I wasn’t planning to have a conversation with someone so sensitive that things like “I think your idea is bad” is a personal insult or impolite.
There’s too much regulation here to compete. Drones are all Chinese too because of all the FAA restrictions on the technology.
For EVs, there were the EV mandates, and there are several restrictions on mining the rare earth metals here like lithium and cobalt that China does not do.
Also, the US is physically very large and spread out, with more long distance driving, which plays more into an ice vehicle’s advantages. Sometimes even cheaper and definitely quicker than fast charging on a road trip.
Personally I think plug in hybrids could work better, especially EREVs. My concern is governments leaping to the conclusions that full EVs, mandate them, and in so doing lock out promising technologies from improving
The US is big - but these GM EVs under threat all had 200kWh+ batteries and 500mi ranges.
The reason why EVs suck in the US comes down to high electric prices, scarce charging points, and the level to which EVs tend to be locked down and unrepairable.
My guess is ICE cars sell more energy which is packaged as gas, which benefits certain industries. More control over price. Not as much control over electric with solar and other sources. I don't think it's much more than that, it just has a political package.
It is hardly surprising given these facts:
1. US is the largest oil producer country in the world
2. US knows it has lost the EV race
3. ICE employees have an outsized impact on elections due to where they live
4. America is a giant land mass and Americans want 500 miles of range when most countries are ok with 200.
Most Americans don’t drive anywhere near that far.
the range would be for more than one trip.
anecdotally i had a 2011 Nissan Leaf 1st year it came out. Was neat. I have not gone back to electric. I sold it for $800 with 90k miles on it.
> 1. US is the largest oil producer country in the world
[citation needed]
Here's mine, Saudi Arabia is by far the largest exporter:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_expor...
Perhaps you're confusing oil production with refined petroleum (e.g. gasoline) exports?
Edit: Thanks for the correction, looks like for the last 8 or so years US has indeed occupied the top slot for production:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:EIA_Oil_Production.png
> Here's mine, Saudi Arabia is by far the largest exporter:
I think it's not unreasonable to think that "producer" means "producer", not "exporter". Wikipedia has a nominally matching article [0], which indeed lists the US as the largest producer of crude oil and lease condensate.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_produ...
Perhaps it is unreasonable to conflate production and export in a discussion about the "strange" decision making of domestic industry players...?
I found using "producer" to mean "producer" was very clear to me.
YOU are confusing crude oil production with exports. The US IS the largest oil producing country:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_pro...
The parent commenter is right. You are wrong. Do a little Google search before commenting.
They did do one, but the US only slid into top spot somewhat recently it looks like?
Can avoid the hostility.
It's half a decade.
1 is not true, 2 maybe, but people haven’t bought EVs beyond the upper middle class segment too. 3 I don’t think it’s employees, but there’s definitely government involvement which has made innovation difficult.
Plus, there’s a question if pure EVs are the best, perhaps EREVs might be better.
Throw in: Unwilling or unable to build out the charger network. No power for EV’s as it’s going to crypto and ai. And to aluminum smelting. And to heating the northern states. And to cooling the southern ones. And losing the energy from wind, solar and geothermal. Maybe nuclear as I don’t know where the guy stands on that.
This is definitely what consumers think about when making a ourchasing decision. You can't go more than a couple of miles in a populated area without seeing a gas station. Charger stations on the other hand are few and far in between, and take much longer than a gas refill does.
Gas prices are also a major economic indicator in people's minds. They have an idea of what the per gallon cost "should" be, and how much it costs to fill up the tank. They have no such equivalent estimate for electric vehicles.
Also, what a lot of consumers think is that it is basically free and it is not.
And also a simple fact, that current EVs are simply bad products from a UX perspective.
Getting a new car has felt like a step up in quality of life, but not so with EVs. You get an overall worse experience.
A part from already mentioned issues like, charging infrastructure, range and charge times there are everyday things of living with a car.
Removing stocks and buttons for essentials controls like drive select, turn signals, door locks and opening the glove box.
Inability to fix small issues like replacing a light bulb or fixing a lock. Aging software that becomes unsupported by manufacturer a few years in. But is much more essential to car operation, than before.
And low resale value that makes these very expensive to buy vehicles, essentially single use appliances with planned obsoletion embedded.
Living with EVs is tougher than ICE cars. And until that at least equalizes, what regular consumer would want that?
Looking at the CEO's source he is talking about the PR release from GM about adding capacity for straight up ICE vehicles. Why the hell aren't they investing in hybrids?
EVs are having their own little dotcom bust right now. You can't say the companies didn't try. Every automaker came out with a near identical EV that was too expensive. And some even made some pretty bold steps to stop ICE production on some models.
EVs are still inevitable in the not too distant future so long as batteries keep improving, but the jump is not going to happen overnight.
They need to have a true 500 mile range, even at low ambient temperatures. I live in MN; winters are fucking brutal on EVs and their already inflated estimated ranges.
Why? Gas cars get much worse mileage in low temperatures too. Not as bad as EVs, but it is substantial. Many gas cars don’t have 500mi of range, certainly not in dead cold conditions.
With the increase of density of fast charging infrastructure (which, is pretty much the only reason you need large ranges in EVs), you require less overall range between stops.
What’s needed is access to at home charging infrastructure so cars can be topped off daily.
> Many gas cars don’t have 500mi of range
No but what they do have is the ability to pull into literally any Andy Griffith backwater town gas station and be on their way in 5 minutes. That makes their range nearly unlimited.
This need is a bit overstated. Keep in mind that unlikes a gas car you can charge up your EV at home. How regularly does the median American actually drive 300+ miles in a single day?
The average American household has multiple cars - having at least one of them being a EV commuter appliance isn't that wild of an idea.
I work from home and honestly might use a tank of gas a month; I also only own one vehicle. However, I do have a vacation home where I drive to/from every week from June to September and it does not have currently have the level of electric service, nor availability of charging infrastructure nearby, to allow for me to charge an EV w/o driving 25+ miles each way.
So; to answer your question: how often do I drive 300+ miles in a day? 2x a week for 1/4 of the year.
Unless your vacation home is off grid, there is almost no way you would not be able to have enough electrical service to charge an EV. Maybe not enough to install a big chunky 50-60A 240V outlet, but a much smaller and reasonable 240V 20A outlet is more than sufficient for most cars. You won’t have a full charge overnight with a 3.8kW charger, but it’ll be plenty usable for putting around town.
Also, your anecdote is certainly not the plethora of people in America. The vast majority of folks take maybe one vacation a year, if that, and certainly don’t own a vacation home.
There is definitely an inconvenience to it which affects the freedom to navigate. Americans don’t like their freedoms being taken away.
There is no need to fuel at home. Technically you could get large tank of diesel to do it. But going to stations is not big deal.
Not having to go to a gas station ever is a paradigm shift that I think a lot of ICE owners underestimate. You're never late to something because you need to make a pit stop to get gas. If you always have your car charged at home, time to get places is much more deterministic. You also don't need to worry about CC skimmers, which at least where I live have been a pretty common problem off and on for many years.
I live in MN and have a Lightning. The range does drop significantly in the winter compared to the summer, however no other vehicle I've ever owned has been able to pre-heat my cabin in my garage every morning before my commute to work, and I'm not driving 500 miles to work so it seems like a worthwhile trade off to me.
It looks like worldwide 25% more EV's will be sold in 2025 vs 2024. I'm struggling to see how that is similar to a dotcom bust.
The US is effectively withdrawing from world markets.
This is profound and hard to believe --- because it is just plain dumb. China loves it. It is total capitulation to their economic agenda.
25% of US GDP is derived from global trade. Turning your back on this will lower the standard of living for Americans in general by raising prices.
Next up in this regression --- a default on US debt.
US trade policy acting like it’s inspired by 17th century China sure is something isn’t it.
nah, stephen miran doesn't want us to default on US debt. Instead, the goal is to devalue the US dollar to reduce the cost of debt service (with the convenient side effect of reducing real incomes while maintaining the wealth of asset holders).
see: https://www.hudsonbaycapital.com/documents/FG/hudsonbay/rese...
devalue the US dollar to reduce the cost of debt service
The only way to service the debt --- is by selling more debt.
Which will become increasingly difficult to do --- which leads to default.
I like the idea of vehicles with an electric drivetrain, but I mostly drive a pickup truck and do truck things with it (tow things long distances).
Something like the "new" Ramcharger (2026?) is perfect for me. It is a plug-in hybrid with an electric drivetrain, with a V6 generator for adding range.
Build more vehicles like that please. Ideally something with Toyota's reliability.
Many communities in Florida love electric golf carts. If the right vehicles are available at the right price with the right capabilities people buy them.
Tariffs made sure that's not possible.
If Rivian made a golf cart Id buy some clubs. It may be my only viable access to a Rivian!
Because chargers were enshitificated before they were widely deployed. I want to arrive on charger, connect the charging hose, wave a debit/credit card or my phone with NFC interface and start charging.
But noooo, you need to have an account with your debit card linked to it and use their half assed application or you won't be able to activate charger. And you should better pray that charger in your destination is actually operational and your car is compatible with the charger, which itself is fucking wild.
The whole EV industry essentially ignored lesson learnt for last 100 years using ICE cars - gas pumps, with somebody who can assist you if you don't know do exist for a reason!
Rivian CEO should go outside and try what is the average charging experience for an average customer.
In AU, they already have public charging networks (Evie, for example) that allow you to pre register your VIN and just roll up, plug in and it starts charging.
Do you need to pre register your VIN on a gasoline pump? Then why would somebody even consider this as a requirement for BEV...
Actually I think this sort of feature could sell in regular cars as well. Embed a chip next to filler cap. Then at station just pull out nozzle place it in and in few second automatically start pumping. Then later the charge would go directly to credit card.
Many would love it if it was secure enough.
What's the most up to date research about ICE vs EV full life cycle "cleanness"?
EU:
Electric cars are the cleanest—and getting cleaner faster than expected
https://theicct.org/pr-electric-cars-getting-cleaner-faster/
USA:
A cradle-to-grave analysis from the University of Michigan has shown that battery electric vehicles have lower lifetime greenhouse gas emissions than internal combustion engine vehicles, hybrids and plug-in hybrids in every county in the contiguous U.S.
https://news.umich.edu/evs-reduce-climate-pollution-but-by-h...
This ICE headline did not mean what I thought it might.
Internal combustion engine, readers
I guess now we know what all those tariffs are really about, it's just a way to force other countries to buy American petrol.
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People could see this coming a mile away. The automakers, whom currently produce the vast majority of vehicles, are tired of financing their competition (Tesla), who for years now has sucked all the air out of the room in the auto industry, despite accounting for a small fraction of vehicle sales overall. The carbon credits are solely responsible for creating Tesla. They created an unfair environment where we have an industry propping up a company that should have never been propped up to begin with. Had it not been for those credits, Tesla would never be able to compete on its own and would have gone bankrupt a long time ago.
Electric vehicles have a dubious environmental impact, require special and costly new infrastructure, are inferior economically and do not align with US policy goals around energy.
Look at every business who has tried to adopt Tesla vehicles and you will see only failure followed by trying to unload the vehicles for a huge loss. Tesla cannot or will not produce a decent work truck, and are grossly disconnected with the needs of the average American (self driving, robots and other such bric-a-brac need not apply).
For those that want to purchase these vehicles, they should remain an option, albeit a minor one. The technology (still quite inferior) needs to stand on its own, not be propped up by the public, the vast majority of us do not want an electric vehicle and will never want one.
>“ Electric vehicles have a dubious environmental impact, require special and costly new infrastructure, are inferior economically and do not align with US policy goals around energy.”
Citations needed.
Oil extraction is massively damaging, co2 is causing global weather turmoil, exhaust while better than the 70’s for passenger cars/trucks is still an air quality issue, noise pollution is worse for ice.
And electric cars are objectively more pleasant and nicer to ride unless one likes loud, slow to accelerate vehicles over smooth and quiet. I guess there will be some who prefer noise and lag for nostalgia.
ICE ludism doesn’t matter though, we’re at a tipping point, especially in the rest of the world. Ice cars are become horses and no amount of complaining will stop that.
> And electric cars are objectively more pleasant and nicer to ride unless one likes loud, slow to accelerate vehicles over smooth and quiet. I guess there will be some who prefer noise and lag for nostalgia.
"Objective" is reaching a bit. Loud? My last two ICE vehicles have sufficient cabin noise-dampening to the point that one of the manufacturers can actually pump engine noise into the cabin. Tire noise from EVs is more, typically as a factor of increased gross vehicle weight. Lag? Unless you are driving an ICE with a large turbo, what lag? And as the owner of an ICE that can accelerate 0-60 faster than consumer EVs with the exception of Tesla's Performance models (which it keeps pace with) and the Plaid, and who likes having a performant vehicle, I could count on one hand the number of times I've needed that level of acceleration. Regular Tesla Model 3 0-60 times of 5.6s is absolutely in the world of Audi (with multiple entry level models in the 5s range) and even Camry only half a second behind.
I like EVs, I've spent plenty of time in them and enjoy driving them.
But I think there's a certain irony that often those who squeal "ICE Luddite" seem to also hold views about ICE modernization that are more akin to a time capsule of "the last time I cared about ICE vehicles was 15 years ago, and I'm certain they haven't advanced an inch since then".
Okay so to recap your rebuttal is coming from the context of “my last two cars were high end luxury vehicles with plentiful sound dampening” and “one of my cars is an extremely fast sports car”. Okay… yes from the standpoint of the 1% in their audi R8’s, I suppose ICE and EVs are equally quiet and lagless. I personally can’t speak to that so I’ll take your word.
But Comparing more normal people cars though like various mid range post 2020 Subarus, fords, rav4s, and 2010s Volvos, among others, those compared to EVs and plug in hybrids in EV mode including lower end ones like the crosstrek plug in hybrid - the latter were all quieter and had immediate acceleration w less lag compared those ice.
(And I’m excluding the 2025 stop start Subaru forester from that assessment because it’s lag is a whole other level from stopped. Not sure if that’s normal for all stop start cars, but perhaps this is the type of modern ICE innovation from the past 15years that the ev people are unaware of?)
Equally, airplane travel is a totally different experience when one is on a private jet or in first class versus taking southwest.
> Loud? My last two ICE vehicles have sufficient cabin noise-dampening to the point that one of the manufacturers can actually pump engine noise into the cabin.
Most cars are not like this, because they don't spend as much money on sound dampening materials. The baseline 'good' for an EV is just much higher. Also, at idle, ICE cars are louder.
> Lag? Unless you are driving an ICE with a large turbo, what lag?
Pretty much every ICE car that is commanded to rapidly accelerate must drop down a gear (or 2). The mechanical time to shift gears and then also rev match just physically takes time. More expensive ICE cars are faster, sure, but compared to even the most anemic EV, the EV will win in response time. As soon as you hit the accelerator, you get torque. It's just not even close. Likewise with deceleration. You have a very non-linear deceleration curve with an ICE vehicle that is neither smooth nor even.
The ICE car industry has been externalizing its damage for a long time, and if anything should stop being "propped up" its them; if you don't want to actively hand money to Tesla, that's fine, but Tesla is still going to have a natural advantage in a world where we stop letting people who insist on driving ICE cars fuck the world up without paying for it.